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Originally uploaded by silverlantern

The trip to Hakone was scenic, but I don’t care much for scenery so busied myself with a pretty bento box I bought onboard while Jae had a katsu sandwich. At this point, we don’t really eat meals at meal times, we eat whenever we’re hungry or whenever we see food that looked good. The bento box came all wrapped up in a pretty patterned napkin. Inside were all sorts of food, many I’ve never seen before. Everything was placed precisely, almost too pretty to eat. Interesting items included sweet fried eggs, and salty pickled flowers.

Back in the station we couldn’t find any other roads. I suppose the guy we asked thought we wanted to go to the station which is of the same name as the street we wanted to find.

Well, with no other choice, back down the mountain again. We reached the bottom to an actual street and then saw the sign to our ryokan. We were still early for check-in so we gave them our luggage and returned to the station for our self-guided tour of Hakone.

By this time we were suppose to have met up with Ed and Claudia, but they were no where in sight. Not able to find an international phone to call them, we decided to leave them a note and go on ahead. 

The cable car and a short taxi ride later, we reach our destination, the spa park, Yunessun.

The spa park is uniquely Japanese, I don’t think there is anything like it anywhere else in the world. Like a normal water park such as Raging Waters or Hurricane Harbor in the States, the amusements involve water and everyone wears a bathing suit. That’s where the similarities end. Instead of rides there are all sorts of unique hot spas and food related themed spas. The 25 different spas include ramen, tea, coffee, sake, and wine. They even had a sex segregated no swimsuit side that none of us dared try.

Inside they gave us a towel, a cover-up to wear over our swimsuits and a little waterproof rubber bracelet. That had an embedded RFID chip that allowed us to open our lockers with a wave of the hand and to pay for any meals and services inside the establishment. What genius! Also impressive was the super clean changing room. They also provided hair dryers and Shiseido shampoo, conditioner and body wash. At check-out, all we had to do was walk up to an ATM like machine, drop our bracelets inside and insert the appropriate amount of money to pay. Once you’re checked out, a ticket pops out for you to leave the gate. I think this place showcased Japan well at it’s cleaniness and use of technology.

Unfortunately we only had a few hours because we wanted to finish the rest of the tour of Hakone and make it back by 7pm for dinner. There were so many spas and we wanted to try each one so we only spent a few minutes in each. Walk in , take some pictures, relax and then on to the next one! We could’ve easily spent a whole day there.

Sidebar: We must seem wild and crazy to them…
What caught my attention time and time again was just how reserved people are there. We”ve never been the loudest group anywhere, but in Japan, we always seem like the loudest people around. You’d think that at a water park people would let loose and have some fun… In the pools we posed and played with the props, but everyone else just kinda sat around. At the water slides, Jason, Binh and Jae were tearing down them as fast as possible and into the water with a huge splash but  the Japanese teenage boys, they came down at a snails pace holding on to the sides before falling into the pool with a plop.